Stoppages & Malfunctions ... What?

[JF1]

"Regardless of intent, most cops will leave training like that with feelings of the latter about the instructors. We know most officers will have trouble doing malfunction clearance on the square range, why do we need to confirm what we already know is going to happen in a high pressure scenario? How does the student benefit from that? What's the value of having a guy leave training with the mindset of "sims guns are crap, the instructors are douchebags, and my entire day got wasted on this crap". Once the students feel like they are getting screwed with, they start coming up with excuses and playing the blame game, and nothing gets retained from training."

I get we can't control how others think/feel, but if the message being taken away by most of the students was "That scenario was BS," then the instructors need to look at how the scenario was designed, objectives, and how the debrief was handled. At some point the training needs to progress to pushing the student's comfort envelope so they can improve. You're not going to get past some folks' egos, but how well do your instructors design and sell the training from the square range/tactics onto force on force?

We have instructors that teach firearms manipulations in a dry setting at the beginning of the academy firearms training and then expect the students to remember how to fix the problem when they encounter a malfunction later on during live fire training even though they may not have experienced a malfunction for the past several training sessions. Our use of force instructor lectures/tests the academy in a classroom setting, but doesn't follow up with any simulator, use of force report writing, or force on force scenarios. How well do you think these students fair on their own to do these tasks? The problems I see with training consists of lack of time/frequency dedicated to train, inexperienced instructors (been/still there) and fragmented staff with different agendas. Trying to maintain a staff of arrest and control, patrol procedures, and firearms instructors that are on the same page and having a supervisory and command structure that supports putting a quality product out there vs a "check the box warm body in the seat" officer is hard to do. Passing a watered down test is the bench mark for administrators.

[John Hearne]

And, if you already have Simunitions conversion kits, the Speer force-on-force ammo seems to be a marked improvement over the Simunitions brand rounds.

[Chuck Haggard]

Concur with John ref the Speer FOF ammo, that proved to be vastly more reliable in our Glock Sim guns

[heyscooter]

And, if you already have Simunitions conversion kits, the Speer force-on-force ammo seems to be a marked improvement over the Simunitions brand rounds.

I see what you did there. *golfclap*

[Surf]

I will first note that I know Randy and Gene fairly well and I am certified from both ATK and SIMUNITIONS but I have no dog in the fight for either company. Supposedly my employer is one of and at times the largest account with SIMS and my unit uses a good majority of that, so our exposure is heavy. Great training tools. As for ATK, it has been a couple of years or more since I went through the 3 day ATK FoF instructor course and my unit did heavy trials, so these were my observations on the ATK FoF ammo.

ATK has an interesting back story on development of this round and when in development was costly and from an engineering standpoint one of the most complicated munitions, live or otherwise that the ATK engineers tackled. Sounds odd as ATK is huge, but the round presented interesting problems due to its gel marking component. Because of this never drying out, easily cleaned marking gel the balance between velocity and keeping the head of the round intact during firing and the ability of the rounds outer skin to rupture on impact was a tough balance. In back to back heavy testing trials, we personally found that the ATK needed a more rigid surface in order to rupture and leave a mark. On the upside, due to the lack of wax on the round, barrel fouling, cleaning and weapon function reliability increased. The 5.56 rounds were amazingly accurate with the o-ring. The other downside is we actually like the smell of the powder. Besides casings, power burn smell is a valuable indicator and there isn't one with ATK. This is a positive for some agencies when indoors, or at least touted as being "green" or more "environment friendly" as there is no primer powder smell. It was claimed that the ATK round had less force on impact. Myself and my partner ran 3 days of pure T-shirts and took the initial hits on the rib cage and back of the thigh for the introduction. It felt about the same to me and my partner. We were pretty damn tore up after 3 days. Maybe improvements were made since then, but it was a wash in that area IMO.

At that time ATK safety gear was still in development and many of our ideas got sent to the design guys and improvements were made. Randy had just went to ATK and the program was in the early stages at that time, so I can only expect great things from ATK, if they choose, because they are a giant.

[Surf]

Oh, sorry as far as the original topic, I just spent a good majority of the past year training several hundreds of Officers. I don't normally interact with your average Officer in the firearms training topic and this was an interesting experience. I have many years in so I am fully aware of the issues faced, especially from a very large agency, however as mentioned, this experience was eye opening. I found many experiences to be the exact same as mentioned by others in this thread. We had 2 separate training groups and myself and my 2 guys put a good bit of emphasis on the remedial, type I and II stuff into our 2 day courses. While we had a schedule to follow, it was at the least an eye opener for many Officers on how lacking they were skill wise. It is up to those who choose, to do something about it from here. Invitation was left wide open for ongoing training at no expense to them, just their own time. Of course, like any agency you have those who shrug it off an just drive on. Sad, but none the less a reality.

[JustOneGun]

Just as an addendum to my original post, my agency switched to UTM sim rounds, which perform remarkably better, and last time I played with them did not seem to have the same amount of problems. Your mileage may vary, etc etc.



Totally valid point, sim guns can definitely go belly up pretty quickly.

I did like the UTM rounds because they malf a lot less and are much more accurate. They do however have a small cross section and hurt a lot when you get shot at close range. Definitely need to have good range safety when you shoot them. The rounds (at least a few years ago) have an aluminum base. They sometimes go under the skin if you are shot from close range. Mandatory long-sleeved shirts stopped this.

[John Hearne]

At that time ATK safety gear was still in development and many of our ideas got sent to the design guys and improvements were made. Randy had just went to ATK and the program was in the early stages at that time, so I can only expect great things from ATK, if they choose, because they are a giant.

You may want to look at the Phoenix RBT protective gear. It took them forever to get their helmet on line but I really like the design. Basically the face mask tips up allowing you to debrief very comfortably. The headgear will allow cheekweld with long guns if you push your cheek down. I haven't had a chance to see how durable they are but the basic design is very solid.

[heyscooter]

I did like the UTM rounds because they malf a lot less and are much more accurate. They do however have a small cross section and hurt a lot when you get shot at close range. Definitely need to have good range safety when you shoot them. The rounds (at least a few years ago) have an aluminum base. They sometimes go under the skin if you are shot from close range. Mandatory long-sleeved shirts stopped this.

Allegedly the T&E guys also found out what you found out the hard way. They were digging them out of skin and everything.

The pain isn't that bad with their pistol rounds. With their 5.56 it's not as fun for sure, but we get on with it. Also the way UTM works is pretty fascinating. All of this discussion about the genesis of how sim rounds came about is pretty interesting as far as the engineering; it's no wonder they cost more than normal ammo.

Also, you haven't lived until you've tried out an M249 with sim rounds. WOOF.

[Wayne Dobbs]

During service on one DoS contract, I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to be an OPFOR role player. I've been shot dozens of times with UTM from 5.56 platforms. They are very accurate and hurt like hell and can penetrate. We had a 5 meter "do not shoot the nice OPFOR guys" rule but it didn't always get followed. I've seen some bloody OPFOR dudes from UTM and therefore, I think it's the preferred choice. As noted, the pistol rounds don't hurt as bad but seem to be more accurate to distance and more durable than Sims ammo.